The State Hermitage Museum: Exhibitions

Equestrian Portrait of Frederick William III

Franz Kruger

1831

Oil on canvas

In a portrait specially commissioned by Nicholas I for the War Gallery of 1812 in the Winter Palace, Frederick William III is depicted in the uniform of a Prussian general with the orders of St George, 4th Class (Russia), the Iron Cross, the Black Eagle (Prussia) and Maria Theresa (Austria). In the background is a panorama of Berlin with, on the left, the monument to Germany's war of liberation against Napoleon in 1813–15.

Frederick William III (1770-1840) was King of Prussia from 1797. He belonged to the Hohenzollern dynasty and was the son of Frederick William II. For a long time Prussia maintained neutrality with respect to Napoleonic France. In 1805 war broke out on her frontiers and she was obliged to abandon that policy. Shortly before the Battle of Austerlitz, Frederick William received the Russian Emperor Alexander I. During their meeting that took place in Potsdam at midnight by the grave of Frederick the Great, he solemnly promised his guest his support, if Napoleon rejected Prussia's mediation.

However, Count Christian von Haugwitz, who directed Prussian foreign policy, persuaded the King to wait with the offer of mediation. As a result, Austerlitz had already been and gone, before Haugwitz met with Napoleon. In the course of the negotiations, Napoleon got Prussia to cede several small districts, but in return he gave her Hanover that he had taken from the British monarch. Prussian patriots found the treaty insulting. Queen Louise and many close to the throne pressed for war with France. In 1806 Frederick William did declare war on Napoleon, but the Prussian army suffered a crushing defeat. At that time the Russian forces were already at Prussia's borders. In 1807 a new war flared up in Poland in which Napoleon faced the Russian army, but in the Battle of Friedland the Russians were overwhelmed. Alexander was obliged to consent to negotiations with Napoleon at Tilsit. By that time the entire territory of Prussia had been occupied. In 1807 Frederick William III signed a peace treaty at Tilsit, recovering only half his lands.

In 1812, before his invasion of Russia, the French Emperor forced Austria and Prussia to sign agreements with him that obliged those countries to provide military contingents to assist the French forces. Despite this, within the Prussian army a Russo-German legion was also created that fought against Napoleon's army. The news of the loss of the French army in Russia inspired an upsurge of patriotism in Germany. From early 1813 the whole of Prussia was under arms. Frederick William issued a proclamation sanctioning a war of liberation against the French occupiers. In 1814 the Prussian army entered Paris as part of the anti-Napoleonic coalition. Frederick William took part in the Congress of Vienna in 1814-15 and regained the Prussian Rhineland, Westphalia, Poznan and part of Saxony.